The Saranap plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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83° on Nov. 15, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1970. Next is 81° in 2010.
Saranap’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Diablo, about 3,810 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene marine rocks (sandstone, mudstone), from the Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Saranap reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Las Trampas Creek and Walnut Creek: about 13 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Saranap; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saranap has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 45° in January. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Saranap normally reaches 66° and falls to 50°. The record high is 82°, in 2008; the record low 37°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.82 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1970 at Oakland Museum, 12 miles west-southwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
